Sharp investing $1.2b in expanding smartphone LCD production, Apple fingered as the major client
Apple's practicing its self-imposed rule of supplier polygamy this week and Japan's Nikkei is telling us all about it. It started off on Monday, when we learned that Toshiba's throwing down some cash to build a new smartphone display production plant, with Apple as the key investor and subsequent consumer, and today we're hearing pretty much the same story, only with Sharp playing the role of Japanese producer to Apple's hardware whims.
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: apple, iphone, japanese, much-the-same, plans, portion, production, result, roadmap, screen, toshiba
Mobiado’s 712 Mokume Gane: because your Galaxy S lacks ancient Japanese metallurgical craftsmanship
Is there any way to sensibly justify Mobiado's colossally overpriced, underspec'd handsets? Not as far as we can tell -- but Mobiado seems to be eminently aware of (and okay with) that, diving yet deeper into the bottomless pit of conspicuous consumption this week with the announcement of the 712 Mokume Gane candybar. What's "Mokume Gane" mean, you ask
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: 712, answer, bankruptcy, bottomless, engadget, engadget-mobile, entry, galaxy, Grain, japanese, luxury, models, mokume, weapons
Lady Gaga trapped in an Android smartphone, we wish she’d stay there (video)
NTT DoCoMo has Darth Vader selling its Android wares, so what could KDDI au possibly counter with? Why, a force even darker and more heinous than the Sith Daddy himself: Lady Gaga. Yes, the music fiend we love to hate has remixed Poker Face just to make sure we take notice of Sharp's IS03 , and the kindly Japanese carrier has taken care of inserting her into the phone for maximum promotional value.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone Tags: advert, endorsement, entry, fiend, japanese, music, promos, result, sharp, wares
Panasonic says it will start selling Android-based smartphones in Japan next year, overseas in 2012
Panasonic may not be new to cellphones, but it has sat out of the smartphone explosion of recent years -- an oversight that it's now apparently looking to correct. Speaking at a news conference today, the head of Panasonic's mobile division, Osamu Waki, said flatly that the compmany " misjudged the speed at which smartphones would be taken up in the Japanese market," and that "with the rapid shift to Android, we want to catch up quickly." Exact details on how it plans to catch up are expectedly still a bit light, but Panasonic's phones will indeed be based on Android, and it apparently hopes to differentiate them by emphasizing their networking capabilities with other Panasonic products. As for when the first ones will roll out, Panasonic plans to kick off sales in Japan sometime next year, with overseas markets set to follow in 2012.
Categories: Android, Mobile Phone, Other Tags: engadget, entry, explosion, japan, japanese, kick-off-sales, markets, news-conference, panasonic, Rapid, result, shift, smartphone, smartphones, the-smartphone
Fujitsu dual-touchscreen concept phone hands-on
Back at Mobile World Congress in February, the mobile UI gurus at TAT showed off their interpretation of a dual-screen phone interface using TI's powerhouse OMAP4 testbed. Seemed a little pie-in-the-sky at the time, but frankly, the concept device being shown off by Fujtisu at CEATEC this week -- created with TAT's involvement, it turns out -- seems virtually ready for production. Or the hardware did, anyway; the software was spartan by comparison, obviously designed to call out a few key use cases where having two giant, glorious 960 x 480 displays right next to each other might come in handy.
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: back-at-mobile, dualscreen, engadget, entry, flip, hands, interface, japanese, photos, result, rotated-between, tat, testbed, theastonishingtribe
SK Telecom planning commercial LTE network for next year
South Korean networks -- which have historically gone neck-and-neck with Japanese ones for deploying ridiculously advanced tech before anyone else -- are just a touch slow on the LTE uptake, though not by much. SKT is looking to deploy its first commercial LTE network sometime in 2011 in Seoul on its way to a nationwide rollout in 2013, which means they'll be trailing Verizon and TeliaSonera , just to name a couple (to be fair, archrival KT is apparently on track for a late 2010 launch, so this year's 4G hopes aren't entirely lost).
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: advanced-tech, engadget-mobile, entirely-lost, entry, japanese, launch, lte, neck, result, seoul-on-its, skt, south, wifi
NTT DoCoMo, KDDI launch their endless Summer 2010 collections
Surprise: Japanese carriers are announcing literally dozens of phones at once.
Categories: Android, BlackBerry, Mobile Phone Tags: aquos, BlackBerry, exilim, fujitsu, japanese, kddi au, nec, nttdocomo, sh007, sh008, solar-phone, sony, sony-ericsson, world
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is likely NTT DoCoMo’s best selling smartphone — ever
Japan's wireless networks have a longstanding, legendary reputation for existing in some parallel plane that's technologically light years ahead of the rest of the world, but that reputation's unquestionably in greater danger today than in any point in the past fifteen years.
Categories: Android, BlackBerry, htc, Mobile Phone, Other Tags: control, docomo, ericsson, goodness, japan, japanese, reputation, sonyericsson, wireless
HTC Desire turning Japanese with SoftBank in late April
The HTC Desire is spreading its wings today with the announcement of a distribution deal with Japan's SoftBank. One of the big heavies over on that most famous archipelago, SoftBank will carry a WCDMA version of the handset with the standard Android 2.1 with Sense software and brownish externals. Sorry to disappoint our dear readers yearning for a silver or black option
Categories: Android, htc, Mobile Phone Tags: Carrier, cdma, entry, htc-desire, htcdesire, japan, japanese, language, result, smartphone, softbank, softbank-mobile, softbankmobile, spreading-its
The Japanese android boot screen
more info at herog3.wicholandia.com